4,000 Candles In The Wind: Obama Admin Letting Wind Turbines Kill Up To 4,000 Bald Eagles A Year, Environmentalists Silent
Over the weekend, author and Manhattan Institute scholar Robert Bryce wrote a revealing op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on the deadly effects wind turbines could have on America’s national bird.
According to Bryce, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – an Obama administration agency – wants to extend a “permit for accidental eagle kills” that would let wind turbines “kill or injure as many as 4,200 bald eagles every year.”
Bryce continues:
A 2013 study in the Wildlife Society Bulletin estimated that wind turbines killed about 888,000 bats and 573,000 birds (including 83,000 raptors) in 2012 alone. But wind capacity has since increased by about 24%, and it could triple by 2030 under the White House’s Clean Power Plan. “We don’t really know how many birds are being killed now by wind turbines because the wind industry doesn’t have to report the data,” says Michael Hutchins of the American Bird Conservancy. “It’s considered a trade secret.”
When this article was published, few (if any) groups on the Environmentalist Left had offered comment.
For environmentalists, this is quite the turnaround from the George W. Bush years. When the Bush administration proposed new rules on the Endangered Species Act in 2008 – rules that could affect the bald eagle – “environmental groups and congressional Democrats immediately condemned the proposal.”
Bryce also points out a “double standard” for the Obama administration:
In 2011 the Fish and Wildlife Service convinced the Justice Department to file criminal indictments against three oil companies working in North Dakota’s Bakken field for inadvertently killing six ducks and one phoebe.
This double standard clearly applies to the Environmentalist Left. Whether its Arctic drilling or mining, extreme environmentalists are quick to condemn traditional energy, but will they now direct the same outrage to the Obama administration and wind turbines?